Builders have been eliminating wetland acreage at the fastest pace in at least a decade under a controversial state law that eased protections for the ecologically important lands...

But three and a half years later, a crucial element in the law’s provisions — replacement wetlands that were supposed to offset those eliminated by development — has been temporarily exhausted...it could be years before larger tracts of replacement wetlands are functioning.

Set aside for a moment that there is little chance a quick excavation-and-reseeding project - - no matter how well-intentioned - - can adequately replace a natural wetland that took centuries to form long before human settlement in Wisconsin - - and absorb the impact of the legislative and special interest agendas that have been intentionally substituted these past few years for a coherent, land-and-water environmental policy that serves the public interest first:* One of Walker's first administrative actions - - backed up almost immediately by the adoption of a fast-tracked law - - suspended an incomplete DNR review of a proposal by a Walker donor to fill a wetland for a development next to Lambeau Field.That set the tone: development over conservation, special interests over the public interest, despite the reality that all the water in the state is connected, and that it belongs to everyone, and is supposed to be protected for its common purposes, as the State Constitution says.* Builders bragged about their behind-the-scenes work with key Walker officials to get the wetlands-filling bill introduced.* Walker signed the wetlands-filling bill in front of cheering Realtors.* As I wrote about a year ago to the day about the DNR's wetlands restoration program:

Given new laws and priorities adopted by the Walker administration and implemented by a DNR run with a "chamber-of-commerce" mentality" that disregard science, minimize environmental inspections and enforcement, ease wetland protections, limit citizen involvement along the way and make business development a DNR goal, the agency can't be trusted to launch a plan for wetland restoration without people wanting to know why a wetland - - any wetland - - needs restoration or remediation in the first place.

A big majority of Americans want the US to join other nations in a pact to address climate change, data show, and powerful business interests are taking high-profile actions to help clean the air (see statement below) - - but conservative politicians openly beholden to the fossil fuel sector are promoting their tired, polluting line.Here's one announcement tied to the ongoing Paris climate summit that contains good news:

Rainforest Action Network Calls on Banks to End All Financing for Coal

SAN FRANCISCO — Today, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo released new commitments to cut financing for the global coal industry. Wells Fargo’s policy committed to reduce the bank’s lending to coal mining companies. Morgan Stanley’s policy went further, covering both lending and underwriting, and committing to end financing for coal-fired power plant construction in developed countries.

These policy changes follow similar coal financing cuts at eight other banks earlier this year (Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Crédit Agricole, ING, Natixis, and Société Générale). Morgan Stanley’s commitment followed public pressure from climate activists as part of a campaign launched by Rainforest Action Network (RAN) in October, the latest in a series of RAN campaigns to hold U.S. banks accountable for their financing of the coal industry.

"Today Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo announced they are cutting support for the coal mining sector, adding momentum to recent commitments made by Bank of America, Citigroup, and several others," said Lindsey Allen, Executive Director of RAN. "While the policies announced today do not go nearly far enough to realign the banking sector with the reality of climate change, they are a clear indication that major banks agree coal is an increasingly foolish and unacceptable investment."

Notably, Morgan Stanley’s coal policy statement acknowledges that the bank has a responsibility to contribute to the transition to a low-carbon economy and commits to report on the bank’s policy commitments to cut financing for coal mining and coal-fired power.

These policy announcements come on the same day that President Obama met with President Anote Tong of Kiribati and other leaders of small island states, who have called for a global moratorium on new coal mines. They also follow calls from the Paris Pledge, a global coalition of over 160 global civil society organizations which has urged the banking sector to phase out financing for coal mining and coal-fired power in the leadup to the U.N. climate conference underway in Paris, COP21.

Sunday, November 29, 2015

GOP 'reforms' working as planned by the Wisconsin Legislature's Urban Hostility Caucus and Gov. Walker, says the author of the bill to strip food stamps from some recipients:

Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam), chairman of the Assembly's committee on public benefit reform, said the changes are working as intended.

The food stamp 'reform' - - along with other new state-imposed restrictions on the amount of food stamp aid Wisconsin will distribute and also on the overall length of program recipient eligibility - - mandates that able-bodied adults without children work a certain number of hours in order to receive the food aid, but as the Journal Sentinel points out, job placements for those potential workers are scarce, the Journal Sentinel reports:

Since the new law took effect, just 7% of recipients in Milwaukee County — where about half of the able-bodied childless adult recipients live — who were referred to the FoodShare Employment and Training program were placed in jobs, the data show.

And mandating that those seized vehicles be sold after 30 days if not claimed - - which means the ticketed driver would have somehow quickly pay a costly citation for the ticket, plus the towing and storage fees.

So - - pulled over for a broken tail light, or failing to yield, etc. - - can end up with a punitive and unconstitutional vehicle seizure that will further disconnect lower-income Wisconsin citizen from jobs, child care, medical appointments and other life necessities.

Fat chance, that, given the history of failed proposals and the power of various alcohol-centered special interests - - but let's hope there are not enough votes to take yet another shot at people already struggling by seizing and selling their cars.

I'm not saying it's OK to drive without a proper driver's license, but hammering poor people further down the socio-economic ladder instead of supporting creative and positive approaches to the intertwined problems of marginal incomes, municipal citations and disappearing public services is the mark of bigoted, authoritarian and hard-hearted governance.

Initial work is under way to “twin” Line 61, creating a new Line 66 in the same corridor that would carry an additional 800,000 bpd [barrels per day]. With Line 61 and new Line 66 at full capacity,2 million barrels of tar sands oil would flow through Wisconsin each day.

And also was quietly given a sweetheart state budget amendment by compliant legislators this summer that blocked Dane County with its water-rich farm fields from requiring clean-up insurance if the Enbridge project spilled oil.

After years of watching their state do little to address stormwater runoff, polluted wells, and noxious algae blooms in once clear waters, 16 Wisconsin citizens last month decided enough was enough. They filed a petition with the federal Environmental Protection Agency to force Wisconsin to correct failures in its clean water program or else take away Wisconsin’s authority to administer permits under the Clean Water Act.

It is a step of last resort expressing an utter lack of confidence in the state government’s ability and desire to protect its waterways.

The past two decades have seen the dismantling of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the state agency in charge of issuing and enforcing clean water regulations, according to Kim Wright, executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates. The agency’s workforce has declined 18 percent since 1995. Last summer Republican Governor Scott Walker abolished the agency’s water division and its Bureau of Science Services while eliminating 18 staff positions.

And just a few days ago, Circle of Blue, an independent science and journalism collaborative and website in Michigan, focused on water issues - - and using information in documents obtained from the Waukesha Water Utility through the Wisconsin Open Records law - - raised fresh questions about how Waukesha applied key water levels' data in its possession about available underground water supplies to justify an application diverting water from Lake Michigan.

Friday, November 27, 2015

Quick, dirty, minimal and cheap.It's new Wisconsin Idea, as Republican policy-makers have come up with yet another way of screwing working people and the environment at the same time while evading basic governing and public policy stewardship.And this fake, small government trifecta, this latest iteration of cynical cold-hearted policy-making in our name has such a cynical twist:The very conservatives who claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility and allegedly detest federal funding and have rejected if it were to fund more health care coverage for low-income citizens, or broadband upgrades in the information age, of for Amtrak construction are eager to get as much federal highway money but use it as a cudgel against the abutting environment and the very highway workers out there in the heat or the cold who driving the machines or laying the concrete.That is some nasty bill-drafting and rule-tinkering, let me tell you.Not content with passing the public-sector wage-limiting Act 10 or its companion, 'right-to-work' law aimed at private sector workers - - and scrapping the long-standing family-supporting "prevailing wage" guarantees for workers on local government road and public building projects - - and easing clean water, wetlands, shoreline preservation and related environmental protections in the state that gave birth to Earth Day - - GOP legislators now want to tinker with and shortcut some formulas and policies to minimize or end environmental protections and wage guarantees now required in big, federally-funded road projects, the Journal Sentinel reports:

The bill by Sen. Duey Stroebel and Rep. Robert Brooks, both Saukville Republicans, would require the state to rejigger how it allocates the federal road funding it receives so that some projects would not have to adhere to federal requirements. Total funding for roads would remain unchanged, but for some projects federal money would be supplanted by state or local money.

Others would have more federal money — and less local and state money — assigned to them.

By channeling federal aid into fewer projects, some road work would not have to follow federal policies that are more stringent and costly than state rules. That includes a federal law that sets a minimum pay for those building roads.

This is more than legislators shifting the burden for poor budgeting and special interest obeisance to workers and the environment we all share pay while repeatedly approving dubious and unaffordable billion-dollar commitments to finance I-39/90 expansion from Beloit to the Dells, or eight-years of planned work in the mammoth Zoo Interchange and also to widen I-94 from Kenosha to Milwaukee without the money or a sustainable financing plan in hand.This monkeying with road-building-and-financing rules and procedures is another example of this administration's intentional, ideologically-driven preference for quick-and-dirty over common resource protections that ensure public health and safety.* One of Walker's first administrative actions after being sworn in as Governor was the suspension of an on-going permit review for a development planned by a campaign donor to build a building on a wetland next to Lambeau Field. The Legislature aligned with the Governor also quickly passed a bill to green light the development.* This is the same do-the-minimum mindset that has led the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources where Walker installed top managers with a "chamber of commerce mentality" to limit detailed environmental reviews on the proposed expansion of the tar sand oil Pipeline 61 capacity expansion from Superior to the Illinois border to a single pumping station expansion permit application rather than on the pipeline cross-state route.* The is the same mentality that created the sweetheart iron mining bill approved by the GOP-led legislature with the encouragement of Gov. Walker that would have enabled the creation, through a fast-tracked environmental review tilted towards the company, of the hemisphere's largest open-pit iron mine deeply excavated for miles through the sensitive Penokee Hills/Bad River watershed near Lake Superior.A drop in demand for iron ore worldwide, plus federal and tribal obstacles beyond the reach of the newly-weakened Wisconsin iron-mining statute, convinced the company to drop the project, but the one-sided law is still on the books.Wisconsin legislators have found yet another way to twist law and policy - - this time to manipulate road-building finances instead of fixing the way they approve and fund big projects - - and are less interested if nearby rivers or wetlands or private properties are damaged by dirty air or polluted runoff, or if the roadwork work is done by employees with reduced training or skills, or with hammered take-home pay.

This crescent-shaped glacier in Montana’s northern Rockies had been contracting for decades because of warming temperatures. Lately it has been shrinking at a breathtaking clip, losing as much as a 10th of its mass in a single year. As early as 2030, scientists say, it may no longer exist.

The glacier’s steep decline mirrors that of hundreds of other U.S. glaciers, from California’s Sierra Nevada to the North Cascades to the Central Alaska Range. All are in retreat, yet nowhere are the effects so profoundly felt as here in Glacier National Park, which experts say could be glacier-free by mid-century.

“They’ll be gone in a few decades,” said Dan Fagre, a scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey who monitors the park’s 25 remaining glaciers and plots each year’s losses. “Every year exposes rock that hasn’t seen daylight in centuries.”

This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) image shows the satellite sea surface temperature departure for the month of October 2015, where orange-red colors are above normal temperatures and are indicative of El Nino. (AFP Photo/Handout/NOAA)

Even as Lamar Smith (R-Tx.), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, continues to investigate a high profile study from federal scientists debunking the idea of a global warming slowdown or “pause,” a new study reaches the same conclusion — in a different yet complementary way.

“There is no substantive evidence for a ‘pause’ or ‘hiatus’ in warming,” write Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor at the University of Bristol in the UK, and two colleagues in Tuesday’s Nature Scientific Reports. “We suggest that the use of those terms is therefore inaccurate.”

Wolves must remain under federal protection until individual states, such as Wisconsin, can learn how to protect an iconic species. Scientists have just begun to understand how essential wolves are to maintaining healthy ecosystems.

Hunting wolves as a management tool only serves special interest groups bent on eradication.

Here is an additional post that supports the allegation that Wisconsin's wolf hunting (dogs allowed, only in Wisconsin) and permissible hound training laws and practices were among the most cruel:

Sunday, November 22, 2015

It's reassuring that the world summit on climate change scheduled to begin at the end of the month in Paris will be held as scheduled - - minus one large citizen march - - despite the horrifying atrocities which struck the city and continue to stretch French security resources.

Postponing the conference would be a win for terrorism; a successful program will be good for the planet and prove that Paris can survive a crisis and manage continuing threats and host a world-class event.

The Center for Investigation Reporting continues a run of important stories about the state's troubled waters with yet another piece about Wisconsin residents who - - in this the year 2015 - - do not have access to safe drinking water. Here's the latest with a Sauk City dateline:

During its operation, the plant pumped excess chemicals and millions of gallons of wastewater into Lake Wisconsin and burned toxic substances in large pits on the site, leaving the soil, surface and groundwater contaminated with a dangerous stew of chemicals, including some known or likely to cause cancer...

Saturday, November 21, 2015

- a report that takes an unprecedented look at the relationship between the manure load from factory farms in the Western Lake Erie Watershed (WLEW) and the federal subsidies that have poured into the region to facilities that generate that waste over the last seven years.

Between 2008 and 2015, U.S. Department of Agriculture direct payments, cost‐ shares and other conservation subsidies to owners of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) totaled more than $16.8 million in the WLEW, which includes Ohio, southern Michigan and eastern Indiana.

This report shows that millions of dollars in taxpayer funds continued to be disbursed, even as phosphorus contamination levels in the WLEW climbed and CAFOs in the watershed were fined for illegal waste discharges.

Using current trends in water usage as a guide, the researchers estimate that 3 percent of the aquifer's water was used up by 1960; 30 percent of the aquifer's water was drained by 2010; and a whopping 69 percent of the reservoir will likely be tapped by 2060. It would take an average of 500 to 1,300 years to completely refill the High Plains Aquifer, Steward added.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

That sound of water running surrounding the Milwaukee County Board's decision preserving the broken obstruction known as the Estabrook Dam and deciding against letting the Milwaukee River flow naturally to Lake Michigan is more taxpayer money being flushed down the drain.

Think of it this way:

Suppose for years you've known you have an obstruction in your windpipe that is causing you all sorts of problems.

The doctor says the obstruction can be removed and your overall health will improve, but you opt for having the doctor implant alongside an artificial supplemental windpipe and reinforce the obstruction - - all at twice the cost but paid for by someone else.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

For some years and also in recent days this blog has focused on the damage being done to Wisconsin waters, a crucial publicly-held finite resource.Now comes some good news: UW-Madison researchers say that modest changes in some agricultural land use and rain gardens in urban areas can save large amounts of groundwater:

…reducing the amount of cropland to below 60 percent [on some parclels] or restoring wetlands to above six percent of a given area could bring about significant improvements to surface water quality...[the researchers] aren't calling for slashing cornfields or removing city blocks.

Instead, they say it is possible to get big gains in freshwater benefits by making small changes in targeted places, such as adding rain gardens or parks to urban areas.

Separately, the Natural Resources Defense Council has sent out this information in advance of a report release Thursday on water preservation initiatives:

REPORT TO SHOW SHIFT TO “CLIMATE-READY SOIL” IN WISCONSIN FARMING COULD SIGNIFICANTLY CUT CARBON POLLUTION AND MINIMIZE DROUGHT PROBLEMS

Move to Resilient “Cover Crop” Soil Conservation Needed After Farmers in Top 10 Ag States Lost More than $25 Billion in Crops Over 5 Years Due to Extreme Weather.

MADISON, WI – The Natural Resources Defense Council will unveil a major new report detailing how farmers in Wisconsin and America’s other top nine agriculture states would eliminate tons of carbon pollution from the air, significantly cut crop losses, and prevent the loss of hundreds of billions of gallons of water by shifting to more climate-resilient soil conservation methods.

WHAT: Release of NRDC report, “Climate-Ready Soil: How cover crops can make Farms more resilient to Extreme weather risks.” The report includes specific data for Wisconsin and the nation’s top nine farming states: California, Iowa, Texas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois, Kansas, North Carolina, and Indiana. In the last five years, farmers in those states have lost in excess of $25 billion in crops due to drought, heat, hot wind, extreme rainfall, flooding, and other related impacts.

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

I'd noted all weekend the growing number of detailed media reports about the expanding battle over water use and rights in Wisconsin, so want to add to that archive an interesting legal analysis, here:

Wisconsin’s waters have been protected since before it was a state. The concept of the public trust doctrine, or the state holding navigable waters in trust so they remain forever free and open to the public, was passed down from the Northwest Ordinance to the Wisconsin Constitution, article IX, section 1.1 State statutes have since been crafted to protect Wisconsin’s groundwater and surface water and to give the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) primary responsibility for overseeing this resource.

But Wisconsin’s waters are facing a threat: they are being dried from the bottom up. As high-capacity wells proliferate in Wisconsin, water in groundwater-fed streams and lakes is being diverted to these wells beneath the surface, reducing surface water levels and stream flows.

Monday, November 16, 2015

[Updated from 12:02 p.m.] A Wednesday morning state senate hearing at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison on a bill could be the beginning of the end of fifteen years of fully-open, rational and publicly-spirited local planning in Wisconsin, according to this alert from 1000 Friends of Wisconsin:

If the bill joins a long litany of recent measures favoring corporate interests, then get ready to see land in your town or at the border which you assumed was intended for school expansion, housing, recreation or conservancy get fast-tracked behind closed doors and wired approvals for an insecticide factory, hog feeding operation, trucking depot or big box cluster - - and there could be little you could do about it, because:

* You've been cut out of current planning processes - - by the bill that is getting a hearing this week.

* The same special interests which control legislative maneuvers like the one to repeal Smart Growth and wreak other havoc also have the administrative rules processes, the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the Chief Justiceship under their control, so various petitions and appeals and even lawsuits to prevent or undo reckless, undemocratic planning will be less likely to succeed.

The federal grants should help farmers and other activists like the good folks trying to save Monarch butterfly habitat at the Milwaukee County grounds...
...and get the Monarchs' sole food - - milkweed - - replanted in useful supply.

Sunday, November 15, 2015

[Updated] The right is continuing to expand its power in Wisconsin:* The Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and GOP Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel are backing a move before the right-tilted State Supreme Court that is designed to weaken the independence of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and transfer key policy and rule-making responsibilities from that office to the Governor- - joining other ideological power grabs, including:* Passing pro-business wetlands, shoreline and groundwater control and development policies that minimize public input and water/resource access, check, √* Enabling Act 10 public-employee union busting, check, √* Obstructing ballot access through diminished hours and voter I, √√* Degrading the Independent Office of the Secretary of State, √* Weakening public schools systems and axpanding private choice school funding, √* Enacting 'right to work' legislation and repealing prevailing wage provisions - - private-sector union busting, check and check, √√

Lynda Cochart’s water from her private well was so poisoned by salmonella, nitrate, E. coli and manure-borne viruses that one researcher compared the results from her Kewaunee County farm to contamination in a Third World country. She suspects the problem is related to the county’s proliferation of large livestock operations, although testing did not pinpoint the source.

Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series examining industry’s effects on Wisconsin’s water resources. Part one looks at the politicization of the Department of Natural Resources. Part three explores agriculture's effect on Kewaunee County's drinking water

WAUSHARA COUNTY, Wis. — For the Trudell family, Lake Huron in north-central Wisconsin is a little slice of paradise.

But the Trudells can hardly recognize the lake they have spent summers on since 1988. It has lost about 11 feet of water since 2000, said Dan Trudell, and water levels are continuing to drop. It’s a fate Huron shares with other lakes and streams in Wisconsin’s Central Sands region — a six-county area north of Madison. Some residents and researchers are pointing to the proliferation of high capacity wells — largely used to irrigate crops in the area — as the cause.

Through complacent, shortsighted and partisan behavior, these politicians are disconnecting wetlands from their ecosystems and also disconnecting Wisconsin from imperative local-to-international water conservation planning.

Turning these disconnects around begins with absorbing the common sense conclusion of the 1966 Wisconsin Supreme Court Hixon case ruling that informed water-related decision-making for decades:

A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body of water may be eaten away until it may no longer exist.

An even earlier Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in the 1914 Husting case also emphasized the importance of unfettered public access to water:

The wisdom of the policy which, in the organic laws of our state, steadfastly and carefully preserved to the people the full and free use of public waters, cannot be questioned. Nor should it be limited or curtailed by narrow constructions.

Updated] Two groups are challenging a recent decision by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources that willfully disregards a judge's order and sets the stage for massive manure spreading by an industrial-scale cattle feeding operation.

Two environmental groups Monday filed an appeal challenging the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) decision on Sept. 11 to grant a water pollution permit to Kinnard Farms to expand its large industrial farm to more than 8,000 animal units...

Last month, the DNR approved the Kinnards' permit, allowing them to spread 70 million gallons of liquid manure and wastewater annually from their dairy operation in the Town of Lincoln on 8,000 acres of land in the towns of Lincoln, Red River and Casco, as well as land in Brown and Door counties. The permit was issued despite a October 2014 administrative law judge's decision that said that the DNR had authority under state law to impose a limit on the farm's animals and require off-site groundwater monitoring operations by the dairy.

With big cattle CAFO's expanding with the state's approval, huge pig CAFO's might be next, like this one:

Lake Michigan

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What water, wetland protection is all about

"A little fill here and there may seem to be nothing to become excited about. But one fill, though comparatively inconsequential, may lead to another, and another, and before long a great body may be eaten away until it may no longer exist. Our navigable waters are a precious natural heritage, once gone, they disappear forever," wrote the Wisconsin Supreme Court in its 1960 opinion resolving Hixon v. PSC and buttressing The Public Trust Doctrine, Article IX of the Wisconsin State Constitution.

Banned in Milwaukee

The right, suburbanites say "No light rail for Milwaukee."

James Rowen's Bio

James Rowen, a writer and consultant, has worked for newspapers, and as the senior Mayoral staffer, in Madison and Milwaukee, WI. This blog began on 2/2/ 2007. Posts run also at various news sites, including The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's "Purple Wisconsin."